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Wednesday, 9 December 2015

Is the US an OPEN SOCIETY? Political Opportunism and the Culture of Racism and Xenophobia in the 21st Century

Racism and Xenophobia in the
American Mainstream

One could argue
that the US remains an open society in comparison with China, Russia, Saudi
Arabia, and other countries where the typical northwest European liberal
bourgeois tradition rooted in Lockean political philosophy does not exist. The
US has always presented itself and continues to do so as a liberal bourgeois
society whose values are rooted in the Age of the Enlightenment. This despite
all evidence that it is moving increasingly toward a model not very different
from those it criticizes as authoritarian and despite the reality of policy and
voting record in Congress rather than vacuous rhetoric and rationalizations for
becoming authoritarian.

Considering that
there is almost complete hegemony of markets over the state with corporations
determining policy on the basis of their own best interests instead of the
welfare of all people, to what degree is the US an open society in comparison
to the northwest European countries? Even more important measured against its
own values of Jeffersonian democracy, is the US an open society and has ever
been, considering its slave-owning past, racism and xenophobia? If the American
Dream in the 21st century includes freedom for upward social
mobility rather than a caste system determined by “corporatocracy” and the
politics of racism and xenophobia, are Americans living in an open society or one
that justifies downward socioeconomic mobility on the basis of overriding “safety
and security” concerns?

The open society
concept – socioeconomic mobility and political freedom without the need for
very restrictive conformity and self-censorship as precondition to survive - is
rapidly fading because the war on terror that is in fact a continuation of the
Cold War, combined with a long-standing American tradition of racial and
ethnic-based politics. Is the US an open society for black youth in the inner
city where unemployment runs at 50% and where almost every week a police
officer guns them down?Is the open
society among Latinos that Trump dismissed as drug dealers, criminals and
rapists, rhetoric that propelled him to frontrunner position for president?
Where exactly is the open society except among the wealthier class that wants
to maintain its privileged status and could care less about Muslims, Latinos,
blacks and working class whites that the institutional system precludes from
enjoying the opportunity for upward socioeconomic mobility because of its
elitist nature?

Henri Bergson and Karl
Popper on the Open Society

Henri Bergson (The Two Sources of Morality and Religion,
1932) developed the philosophical concept of the open society concerned
primarily with spiritual and intellectual openness that cannot take place of
course unless there is an open or free political framework permitting it. Karl
Popper (Open Society and Its Enemies,
1945) was a critique of Hegelian and Marxist historicism one which the USSR and
new Communist regimes were based after the war. During the inter-war era when
Stalin’s USSR regime, as well as German Nazism, Italian Fascism and varieties
of authoritarian models across Europe posed a threat to the traditional 19th
century concept of a liberal bourgeois society.

Because Popper was far more
concerned with Communism than with Fascism, and because he is the philosopher
on whose ideas the neoconservatives are rooted, he would have no problem with
the considerable dilution of the open society today, justifying on the basis of
“external threats” even though the state helps to exacerbate such threats. The
assumption was that the open society was antithetical to totalitarian or
authoritarian state. Considering all the empirical evidence about the
surveillance state that exists in the US, the human rights and civil rights violations,
the general trend toward adopting military solutions to solve problems abroad
before giving diplomacy a chance, and police state methods at home as evidenced
by the gunning down of black youth, can we still call the US an open society?

Cultivating the Politics of
Fear with the Selective War on Terror

US history is
not about the tradition immersed in the liberal tradition for all, but
multifaceted that includes extreme right wing groups such as the KKK, xenophobic
elements throughout its history, rightwing Evangelicals and Tea Party elements
that want a society as close to Fascism as possible. All of these groups
embrace aspects that resemble totalitarianism of the interwar era, aspects that
are an integral part of the American political, social and cultural fabric. The
prevailing Islamophobia hysteria in the US, but also EU, Canada and Australia
is part of a racist past rooted in white Anglo-Saxon colonialism and
imperialism in non-white lands.

The only way to
understand the current hysteria is to place it in a historical context and not
isolate it as though it is an aberration or the extreme views of one or more opportunistic
politicians. In short, society gives rise to its best and its worst elements
that move from the fringes of political life into the mainstream. For example, on
the same day that Trump called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US, the
House of Representatives immediately voted for tighter control on visas from
predominantly Muslim countries, taking special aim at Syrians and Iraqis. This was
not a Republican vs. Democrat issue because the bill passed by a vote of 409 to
19, indicative that indeed Trump is the new American mainstream, regardless of
the rhetoric to the contrary! If Trump is the aberration why did the
overwhelming majority of the House vote for such racist legislation, justifying
it on the basis of “the war on terror”?

When a reporter
asked (8 Dec. 2015) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump if the
internment of (120,000) Japanese-Americans represented the values of the
country, and how he would feel if the Japanese had followed the same policy,
there was no answer from the Republican candidate. That the US reached the
point in 2015 so close to that of World War II xenophobic and racist conditions
is attributed to the “war on terror” campaign that Bush and Obama globalized
and it is now out of control and continuously expanding and becoming a bigger
threat because of US and allied policy that sometimes punishes and provokes and
at other times indirectly supports terrorists because they happen to be on the
same side as the US – “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mindset. This is
what took place in Yemen. Saudi-backed
militias are spearheading efforts to roll back Houthi gains and reinstate the
government that the rebels drove into exile in neighboring Saudi Arabia. But
they have turned to Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.(http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-u-s-and-al-qaeda-are-on-the-same-side-in-yemen/) The US was also on the same side as al-Qaeda in
Libya because it wanted to bring down Muammar Qaddafi and it has been following
the same policy of backing terrorists in Syria to bring down pro-Russian
president Assad. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2610598/Group-US-switched-sides-War-Terror-facilitating-500-MILLION-weapons-deliveries-Libyan-al-Qaeda-militias-leading-Benghazi-attack.html and

While pursuing a
war on terror and collaboration with terrorists selectively, the US has been
experiencing a rise in fear of terrorism and xenophobia. The same is true in
EU, Canada and Australia where there is a rising tide of xenophobia and
rightwing populism rooted in anti-Islam tendencies that are rooted in the war
on terror. Contrary to public pronouncements, the goal is to keep people in
fear so that they conform politically and not focus on overriding social and
economic issues, but on “the enemy”, which ironically the very policies adopted
constantly feed. If the goal is to end terrorism, there are many methods to
accomplish it and they most certainly do not include direct and indirect
collaboration in everything from weapons and truck sales to money laundering
for terrorists or fighting against governments opposed to terrorists.

Europe is not
that far from the US, partly because extreme right wing political parties are
waiting in the wings to take power from the two-party (Conservative and
Socialist alternating power every few years). On 8 December 2015, Martin
Schultz, European Parliament President and German politician, argued that the
EU is in danger as a result of terrorism and Muslim migrants flooding the
continent, prompting each country to revert to nationalism. Just one day before
Schultz issued that warning about the integrity of the EU, Republican presidential
candidate Trump called for a ban on all Muslims trying to immigrate or visit
the US until a policy reassessment can be undertaken. Indeed, the wave of
xenophobia with Muslims as the main target is very strong inside Europe,
forcing the Conservative and Socialist parties increasingly toward a rightist
populist orientation so they can retain power, while also continue to feed
their defense industries just as the US does with the war on terror.

In the US there
is the surface appearance of real differences on the war on terror, when in
fact we will see below that Obama started out promising a complete reversal of
the George W. Bush policy, but he increasingly became tied down to Bush
policies and we are now back to Bush under a black Democrat president selling
his message as “progressive”. While many are embarrassed by the blatant racism
and xenophobia of Trump, he is the Republican frontrunner and he represents the
mainstream more so than people would admit publicly if it were not for the
constraints of political correctness. It is in fact a reality that the culture
of fear with Muslim terrorists as the pretext is the driving political force
behind a general anti-Islam wave across the US, as well as EU, Canada and
Australia where hate crimes and series of anti-Muslim attacks have been taking
place. The odd thing about all of this is that it plays into the hands of
militant Muslims recruiting disgruntled youth into their ranks, and this is
well known to the West. Why then adopt positions that actually strengthen
terrorism while all along claiming the only goal is to defeat terrorism.

On 6 December
2015, President Obama addressed the nation on the issue of the tragic mass
killing in San Bernardino in the hands of a radicalized Muslim couple inspired
by the teachings of radical Islam. By linking the killing of 14 people in San
Bernardino to the Paris ISIS attacks that were entirely of a different mode f
operation, and by arguing that all of this is an extension of the 9/11 attacks,
the president argued that the Islamic terror campaign has now “evolved” into a
new phase but the US is “winning”. How is the US ‘winning’ and how it is
possible to “defeat” terrorism that exists in about one-third of the countries
around the world, he offered no specifics any more than any other US
politician.However, he did ask Muslims
to work in combating terrorism by helping with the US counter-terrorism
campaign.

Indicative of
the confidence investors have that anything will change in the status quo
regarding gun control, the day after Obama’s speech on terrorism and guns, the
market dropped sharply but the shares of handgun companies Smith and Wesson and
Sturm Ruger rose sharply. In fact, while in 2015 the US stock market is
relatively flat, Smith and Wesson has risen 115%, indicative thatinvestors are confident more people will be
buying guns because the culture of fear the media and politicians are creating
drives people to arm themselves in a culture already very friendly to guns.
After all, Liberty University President Jerry Fallwell, Jr. urged the college
campusto apply for gun permits because:
"I always thought that if
more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims
before they walk in and kill."

On 7 December
2015, Donald Trump called for a “total
and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” until the
country’s representatives can “figure out what is going on.” While most
Republicans and Democrats went through the rhetorical political correctness formality
of criticizing Trump as counterproductive because the US is a pluralistic
society, they voted in the House to tighten visa controls on Muslims and agreed
more is needed in the name of fighting terrorism. This mindset did not just
emerge out of nowhere in 2015 amid a presidential race. It has deep xenophobic
and racist roots, specifically for Muslims dating to the Palestinian Question
in which the US always sided with Israel.

Racism and xenophobia toward
Muslims intensified after 1979 with the Iranian revolution and became
institutionalized after 9/11. The wind is blowing toward the racist and
xenophobia camp and all politicians know it, so they are moving to the right,
so much so that as far as many Republicans are concerned a Rockefeller
Republican is a “leftist”! The politically correct Democrats are much closer to
the Republican rightwing position of xenophobia than they project to the public,
remaining committed to the concept of an open society only in rhetoric while
voting to move society toward a closed authoritarian model.What annoyed politicians and the conservative socioeconomic elites about Trump's blatant racism is that he deviated from the long-standing path of political correctness, itself a thin veneer concealing institutional racism and xenophobia.

All of this is justified
to the public on the basis of the war on terror. But is the US fighting
terrorism, not as other nations or the UN defines it, but as it defines it, or
is it selectively targeting certain groups while directly and indirectly
collaborating or at least inadvertently assisting others? When Democrat
Senators brought up amendments to curb gun sales to individuals on the terror
watch list, Republicans voted against it. This was a few days after the tragedy
of the mass shootings in San Bernardino, CA by two radicalized Muslims
apparently inspired by ISIS. The proposed legislation for expanded background
checks was similar to that of 2013 following the Sandy Hook (Newtown, CT
December 2012) shooting tragedy.

Here was a very
concrete step to fight terrorism at home by depriving those on the “terror
watch” list of FBI and other agencies, but the majority of US legislators
rejected it. At the same time, these same individuals proclaim that they want
to fight terrorism, while they are not interested in depriving suspects of
weapons they could potentially use in terrorist activities. In fact, they do
not even want to deprive those forbidden from boarding a plane to have the
right to gun ownership. This flagrant contradiction could lead a rational
person to conclude that elected officials are in fact interested in promoting terrorism
because they have no problem with suspected terrorists buying weapons.

US and EU planes
have been targeting Syrian government targets and civilians instead of ISIS,
thus sending the signal to ISIS that the West along with Turkey and Saudi
Arabia are more interested in removing Assad from power than removing ISIS. “Syria's government said coalition planes had
carried out a deadly air strike on the Syrian camp. The United States denied
the allegation and a U.S. military official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said the United States was certain that Russia was
responsible.”(Reuters 8 December 2015)

Although it is
hardly a secret that Russia has been supporting Assad and it would be absurd
that it would target Syrian government forces, the US has been following the
same line of blatant propaganda as Turkey that has been supporting ISIS buying
its oil, as hard evidence is now provided not only by Russia, but also Iran,
Iraq and even by Turkish political opposition. Before the Paris bombing by ISIS
operatives, France had been hitting Syrian government targets just as had the
US and Turkey. In the aftermath of the Paris bombing, France decided to change
its policy and side with Russia, considering that its pre-Paris bombing
campaign of hitting Assad’s forces did nothing to deter ISIS from targeting
French civilians.

When Obama ran
for president in 2008, he promised to make America more popular with the rest
of the world, to help lessen anti-Americanism that was at its highest under
George W. Bush, and to pursue diplomatic solutions to political problems in a
multilateral manner rather than unilateral military solutions that cost
enormous resources, do not solve the problem and in most cases make it worse.
He was referring to terrorism and the Middle East where the US has chosen to
focus because of oil from the Truman presidency to the present.

1.Close
down Guantanamo prison, because it was a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda. The
prison remains open, despite a Senate Intelligence report calling it an example
of US human rights violation.

2.End
Iraq war within 16 months after taking office. The US remains active in Iraq,
despite the fact that the US-imposed government in Baghdad has turned to Iran
and Russia for support against rebel groups whose goal is to lay claim to parts
of the country, and which groups the US supports.

3."Launch
an aggressive diplomatic effort to reach a comprehensive compact on the
stability of Iraq and the region…including all of Iraq's neighbors - Iran and
Syria. While there has been progress to restoring relations with Iran because
it is simply too powerful in the region for the US to destabilize, the Obama
pledge of working with Iraq has not been kept. On the contrary, destabilization
has been the only goal in that country and remains so with the Republicans as
well.

4.Provide
$30 billion to Israel, the largest US aid recipient that has benefited from an
Obama green light to more Israeli settlements, demolish the Palestinians in the
Gaza and force as many as possible from the West Bank to either leave or
capitulate to the apartheid status quo.

While the US and its 19 coalition
partners have been telling the world that they want to eliminate ISIS and
al-Qaeda, they have been hitting targets in Syria and Iraq that have weakened
the governments and strengthened the jihadists that the US is supposedly
interested in eliminating. From August 2014 until the present, more than 23,000
strikes at a cost of more than $4 billion have been devoted to taking down ISIS
when in fact the target for the most part has been civilian and Syrian
government installations. When Russia decided to intervene in Syria to fight
ISIS in November 2015, the US warned Iraqi government that if it opted to ask
Russian support to fight ISIS, then the US would withdraw its support from the
Iraqi government. The Iraqis promised Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that they would stay with the US, but warned that
Turkey, a NATO ally was facilitating ISIS transport of oil while fighting
against Kurdish rebels who were on the same side as Iraq against ISIS. (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-iraq-chose-between-american-and-russian-airstrikes-in-isis-fight/)

Even more alarming, Iraqi
government claims that it has video evidence of U.S. helicopters providing
military assistance to ISIS jihadist rebels. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqis-think-the-us-is-in-cahoots-with-isis-and-it-is-hurting-the-war/2015/12/01/d00968ec-9243-11e5-befa-99ceebcbb272_story.html)
Among other organizations, the Syrian Network for Human Rights claims that the
US airstrikes and those of its allies have been targeting civilians exacerbating
the migrant crisis that has spilled over to Europe. (http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/the-us-led-coalition-bombing-syria-has-killed-more-civilians#.op1mwVbwNk)

Conclusions

What is the ordinary
American citizen to make when comparing the empirical evidence of US rhetoric
about the war on terror and the actual record as mentioned above showing that
in fact ISIS is growing stronger in no small part because the goal of the US is
to topple Assad and not eliminate ISIS. Let us assume that Assad is gone, just
as other dictators of Islamic countries left with the help of the US and its
allies –Libya and Iraq. What exactly would the US gain from regime change even
if Russia is no longer a player in Syria? The only real beneficiaries
at the regional level would be Iran and Israel, while at the global level China
would benefit economically as it has in Afghanistan. Under the best case
scenario, the US would secure a military base but toward what end, considering
that its economy is weakening and projected to weaken even more in comparison
to China currently dumping US Treasury bills along with Japan as the Chinese
currency is now part of the world’s elite hard currencies thanks to the IMF. In
short, geopolitical advantages would be limited and short lived as they were in
Iraq and Afghanistan and the militarists in the US would be back demanding the
next place to intervene.

The political cost for such
reckless policies that are justified in the name of the war on terror will be
continued drift toward a more racist and xenophobic orientation at home to the
degree that the open society will continue to wither away. Of course, the
apologists of the concept will be too ashamed and too clever to call American
society what it is and will continue arguing it is a democracy where freedom
and the American Dream are still cherished. Political polarization with very
few on the progressive side and the majority moving toward a conservative
direction will mean that the historical cycle of America moving from a conservative
to liberal era - from the Gilded Age to the Age of Progressivism, from the
conservative 1920s to the New Deal of the 1930s, from the conservative 1950s to
the liberal 1960s – will end as it has since the Reagan era that now looks more
progressive than the Obama administration in many respects because there was not
as much capital concentration and inequality.

Will the future of America
be closer to the open society concept and values of the Enlightenment era in
the 18th century or will it resemble some combination of the Fascist
and Nazi regimes of the 1930s? Clearly, the US today is not Nazi Germany or
Fascist Italy, but the political, business and social elites are certainly
heading in that direction while claiming they represent values of pluralism,
democracy and everything that characterizes an open bourgeois society. As bourgeois
society sinks into crisis because of immense capital concentration, the tilt toward
an increasingly authoritarian direction is inevitable so that the elites are
able to retain their privileged positions.

"A
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senses and intellect beyond conventions. Slaves to Gods and Demons
takes the reader through a roller coaster enthralling journey of
personal trials and triumphs of a family emerging vanquished and
destitute after World War II.

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deity of sleep and dreams, the book reveals the soul of a people trying
to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
the central theme that life is invariably a series of illusions, some
of which are euphoric, most horrifying, all an integral part of daily
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western civilization in two global wars, the characters in Slaves to
Gods and Demons struggle between holding on to the glory and grandeur of
a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
secular events in Western Civilization."